The Minister of Public Sector Reforms, Dr. Paa Kwesi Ndoum, has underscored the need to urgently and vigorously improve the effectiveness of national and internal institutions in order to improve on competencies and institutional capacity.
According to him, improving upon such institutions, would raise the level of effectiveness of the public sector to ensure that the nation met its articulated growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy.
The Minister, who stated that the nation had experienced a lot which suggests strongly that government and Ghanaians need to take better control over the development assistance with donors including the design, costing and the implementation stages, made this remark when he presented a statement at public forum, organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences last Wednesday under the theme, “Evaluating the effectiveness of National and International Institutions in Poverty Reduction.”
Delving into the evaluating effectiveness of International Institutions, Dr. Ndoum said donors support base had been significant to our economic development efforts since the 1980s and that to our reforms in 1990s but was quick to say that their support had not yielded the best results, due to among other factors, such as institutional and administrative arrangements.
“To improve their effectiveness, the Donor Partners (DPs) adopted the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness that goes beyond a statement of general principles and lay down a practical, action-oriented road map to improve the quality of aid and impact on development.”
On mutual accountability, he observed that donors and developing countries have pledged that they would hold each other mutually accountable for development results as outlined in the aid effectiveness pyramid.
Dr. Ndoum, who is also a Member of Parliament for Komenda Edina-Eguafo Abiriw (KEEA) Constituency, spoke on various issues including good governance, decentralisation, communication plan, means of reducing poverty, how the Ministry of Public Sector Reform came to be and others.
On decentralisation, he said decentralisation of government machinery was a pre-requisite to improvement in the ability of the District Assemblies to perform well to meet the requirements of their mandate as the direct agents for local development.
He said the government aimed to support the efforts of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment to accelerate the decentralisation programme, stressing that the role of his Ministry was to provide effective coordination and oversight role in the implementation process.
To improve upon information, communication and technology and others for effective and efficient dissemination of information, the Minister averred that it was also necessary to implement an integrated human resource information management system to ensure human resource practices and improve records management.
According to Dr. Ndoum, communication enhancement would involve the establishment of an ‘E-Government infrastructure as well as improve the hygiene factors associated to work the environment. “It will call for an eventual total upgrade of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) office facilities and the equipment to enable the effective performance of functions.”
Underscoring what he called cross cutting interventions, he said it would be the implementation of a two-pronged communication plan that seeks to disseminate information on the reform whilst drawing feedback from key holders to continue to shape the progress of the reform.
He lamented that it was unfortunate that the national and international institutions have not been effective, as the nation requires in poverty reduction even though they have seen some decrease in poverty levels in some parts of the country.
According to him, the convention these days was that we should look to the private sector to create the wealth that would lead to sustainable poverty reduction.
“My position is that the Private Sector and even the International institutions that want to support our poverty reduction efforts require an effective public sector to play their roles effectively. Therefore, I wish to turn to what is being done to improve the effectiveness of the public sector in Ghana, he noted.”
Autor(en)/Author(s): Bismark Bebli
Quelle/Source: The Ghanaian Chronicle, 14.07.2006
